Zimbabwe is a land locked Southern African country surrounded by Mozambique on the East, Zambia on the North, Botswana on the West and South Africa on the South as shown on Figure 4 .
Figure 4: Map of Africa showing the location of Zimbabwe
The country has a land mass of 390 580km2 covering three regions (Lowveld,
Middleveld and the Highveld) distinguished based on their general elevation. That is;
Lowveld below 900 m, Middleveld between 900–1200 m and the Highveld, from 1200–1500 m above sea level (Chimhowu, et al., 2009). Zimbabwe also lies in the tropics extending from 15°30’S to 22°30’S and from 25°E to 33°E (Simson, 1979). The raining season covers five months a year from November to March with rainfall ranging between 200mm to just over 1200mm per year, making most parts of country dry and prone to occasional drought spells (Chimhowu, et al., 2009). Zimbabwe is among the poorest countries in Southern Africa but the poverty rates differ significantly between the country’s 10provinces, cities, and rural areas
according to Malaba, (2006). Matabeleland province that covers rural areas around the city of Bulawayo (Figure 4 ) has the highest poverty rate in the country (Malaba, 2006). Poverty is also concentrated in the south-eastern rural provinces of
Manicaland and Masvingo. These areas are the least productive areas in the country due to drought (Malaba, 2006). In 2008, the country was in a state of food
emergency with over 85% of the Zimbabwean population being categorised as poor according to Bird & Prowse, (2008). Over seven million people were receiving food emergency assistance from international food programs in 2009 (Bellmon Estimation Studies , 2012). Zimbabwe’s economy had a GDP of 6.8 billion US$ in 1999 (UNDP Zimbabwe, 2008) but shrunk by over 45% to 4.4 billion US$ in 2008. The country’s unemployment rose to over 88% by the same year according to Mzumara, (2012). During this period, forced economic reorganisation could be observed (Table 4 ).
Some sectors which are traditionally the backbone of the economy such as
agriculture, manufacturing and tourism declined significantly between 2000 and 2008
while sectors such as mining, distribution, trade and telecommunications particularly mobile communications were growing (UNDP Zimbabwe, 2008). The middle-income segment of society deriving income from domestic employment, skills,
enterprenuership, quality and branding were diminishing fast while the low income segment of the society receiving diaspora remittances and having low-skills and low technologies was increasing (Mzumara, 2012).
Table 4: Zimbabwe’s economic outlook between 2000 and 2008
Declining Growing Diminishing Increasing
Agriculture Mining Middle-income segment Low-income segment Manufacturing Distribution and trade Income from domestic
employment
Diaspora remittances Tourism Telecommunications,
finance, real estate
Style, quality, branding Down-trading and cost leadership Private sector Public sector Skills and
entrepreneurship
Low skills and low technologies Formal economy Informal sector
Domestic output Foreign trade 'Real' investment Financial investment Large formal firms
and farms
SMEs/subsistence farming
Source: (Mzumara, 2012; UNDP Zimbabwe, 2008)
However, more recent statistics shows that Zimbabwe has dramatically improved and is now on the road to full economic recovery (ZimStat Quarterly Digest , 2013). The economy started recovering in 2009 and registered a GDP of US$ 9.6 billion in 2011 (Mzumara, 2012). The socio-economic situation has also improved from requiring emergence food aid assistanceto requiring recovery and development aid
by early 2012.
By then with only 1 million Zimbabweanswere still in receipt of emergency food assistance (Bellmon Estimation Studies , 2012), as compared to seven million who received food aid in 2008 (Chimhowu, et al., 2009). This period of economic
recovery was largely the result of an agreement for a unified Government between all major political parties in Zimbabwe which calmed down the political turmoil that had characterised the country’s political landscape for almost a decade. The agreement led to the subsequent replacement of the local currency with the US dollar and the South African Rand. This cured the previously uncontrollable inflation which had reached 9 digit figure by 2008 causing any meaningful economic activity to be extremely difficult (Chimhowu, et al., 2009).
In terms of local governance, Zimbabwe is divided into ten provinces for
administrative purposes (Figure 4 ). The country has two major dominant regions, which covers five provinces in total and are characterised mainly by language and tribal differences. The first region is the Mashonaland, divided into three provinces, Mashonaland West (Mash West), Mashonaland Central (Mash Central), and
Mashonaland East (Mash East), (Figure 4 ). The second region is the Matebeleland, divided into two provinces; Matebeleland South (Mat South) and Matebeleland North (Mat North) (Figure 4 ). These two regions are separated by the sixth province, the Midlands, which lies between them stretching from North to South. On the South and South East, part of the country lie the seventh and the eighth provinces of Masvingo and Manicaland respectively. The last two provinces are the big cities of Harare and Bulawayo, which have been upgraded to provincial status due to population size in these major cities.
Since 2009, the country has been governed by a Government of national unity formed by all main political parties in Zimbabwe, namely, the Movement for
Democratic Change (MDC-T), the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) and a faction of the MDC until 2013 when ZANU-PF regained total control in the highly disputed general elections.
Figure 4: The administrative Map of Zimbabwe showing provinces and big cities
The MDC-T lead by Morgan Tsvangirai had hundred parliamentary seats while ZANU-PF lead by Robert Mugabe had ninety nine seats and the MDC faction lead
by Mutambara had ten seats with one seat occupied by an independent (Chimhowu, et al., 2009; Raftopoulos & Mlambo, 2009).
Prior to this Zimbabwe was governed by ZANU-PF party, led by President Robert G. Mugabe after the country gained independence from the British colonial rule in 1980 (Gowland, 2002).
The population of Zimbabwe is12.9 million people (60% female and 40% male) according to the 2012 official census report (Zimbabwe National Census, 2012), with an annual population growth rate of 1.4%. In addition, the consumer survey
conducted the by Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency (ZimStat) in 2011 established that 65% of the population lived in rural areas while only 35% were in urban areas (Makanjee & Chirongwe, 2012). This distribution is partially influenced by the Government’s forced urban-rural migration, which took place in 2005, famously known as “Operation Clean up” where thousands of illegal structures in all urban areas of Zimbabwe were destroyed and nearly a million people displaced into rural areas (Gowland, 2002). These people were later resettled in the farming areas controversially taken from white commercial farmers during the Government‘s widely condemned chaotic fast track land redistribution program which started in
2000(Chimhowu, et al., 2009).
Zimbabwe has two major tribes and languages, the Shona speaking people
constituting 80% of the population and the Ndebele speaking people accounting for 18% of the population (Political Risk Services, 2012). The word Shona is a linguistic term describing a group of dialects spoken by several ethnic groups in Zimbabwe. Therefore, the Shona speaking people, who are often loosely referred to as the Shona tribe includes; the Karanga (25%), Zezuru (22%), Tonga (5%), Korekore (6%),
Kalanga (5%), Ndau (5%) Rozwi (2%) and Manyika (12%) (Simson, 1979).The remaining 2% is composed of ethnic white and Asian population (Jacobs, 1995). There is not much cultural or religious diversity in Zimbabwe. Half of the population (50%) believes and practices both Christianity and indigenous traditional values, the remaining half is divided between pure Christianity (25%), indigenous traditional beliefs (24%) and (1 %) representing other beliefs (Jacobs, 1995).